


three fathers

by parsnipit



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Adoption, Child Neglect, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Foster Care, Found Family, Gen, kudos to goatdad for that one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 01:13:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19240834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parsnipit/pseuds/parsnipit
Summary: Gamzee Makara has had three fathers. He lost the first two, and he's terrified of losing the third. It takes a human holiday, some good cake, and a lot of love to convince him that things will be okay.





	three fathers

**Author's Note:**

> warnings: child neglect/abandonment, death of lusii, mentions of violence/injuries
> 
> happy father's day, everybody!!

_i. the old goat_

Your first father is the apple of your goddamn eye. He teaches you power in the arch of his neck, teaches you heaviness in the stamp of hooves, teaches you gentleness in the cold nuzzle of slimy fur against your skin. He carries you as lusii are wont to do—slides fangs between your grubscars and scoops you up in his mouth, plunges into the sea and swims you to the territory you’ll make your own. You squeal and giggle your way through your first swim with him. Salt water splashes up on your new wiggler skin, waves crash against his big white sides like thunder, and he cuts through the water easy as you please. A couple times he ducks his head under the waves for too long and you come up choking and gasping, but that’s okay, because he never lets you drown.

You design your hive under his lazy purple gaze, scribbling blueprints out in crayon as you lean back against his muzzle. He watches as the droids build what you done told them to, lifts his head up and shows fang at those who get too close to you. Takes a couple nights for the hive to get finished, and you spend your days sheltered under his head, his glossy white hide turning the sunshine away from you both. As soon as the hive’s finished, he nudges you towards it. You’re reluctant to go—you don’t want to leave him, but he can’t very well come with you, can he? Him being a seagoat, and you being a landdweller, well—

Shit was bound to be a problem.

It gets worse, the older you get. He’s around a goodly bit when you’re real little—brings you floppy jellyfish and huge fish to fill your belly, shows you how to hunt for your own self and drives away any seabeasts what might want to get their munch on of you as you splash around in the tide and build little damp sandcastles. And you figure, hey, what more could you ask of a lusus, right? He keeps you alive and safe. So what if he’s gone a night or two? Or a—a week or two? Or a—perigee...or two…

You see him less and less, the older you get.

At first, that really fucks you up, see? You spend your mornings sitting out on the beach, your eyes leaking purple tears every-which-way, your stomach aching ‘cause you don’t know how to swallow your sobs, not yet, you’re only _two_ and your lusus is supposed to come when you cry so you cry and cry and cry but he never comes. He’s got his home out in the sea, and you guess he figures you’re big enough to take care of your own self most times. And you try! You really do. You try to hunt enough fish to fill your belly, lay low in your hive to keep the seadwellers from paying too much attention to you, practice sparring with the shadows on your walls.

You must not be good enough, though, ‘cause you gotta fight off mean-ass seadwellers more often than not, and your clubs always feel too big and unwieldy. What’s worst is the _hunger,_ though. You hit your first growth spurt when you’re a three-sweeper, and you can’t ever hunt enough to fill your belly. Gets so bad you near about bawl with frustration when flashing silver fish slip through your claws, when the tidepools turn up nothing but tiny-ass crabs you ain’t even strong enough to crack the shells of (and what pinch your fingers something fierce when you try). You’re so hungry it _hurts._

All kinds of natural that you turn to the sopor, then, you think. You seen trolls makin’ pies on your schoolfeed, sometimes, and sopor reminds you of extra-bright mint pies. It don’t taste _bad,_ either. Kinda sharp and bitter, but shit fills your belly a mite better than water does, and it makes you feel all warm and soft and _safe_ inside.

Your mornings spent waiting for the old goat ain’t so bad, after that. You grab a pie, sit out and watch the waves, and you chill. He’ll come back. He’s gotta come back. Just a matter of _when,_ really.

And he does come back, every couple perigees, and you near about work yourself into a froth over your joy each time. You hug him ‘round his heavy neck and he snuffles at you, all cold breath and damp fur, and you giggle and you tell him (you gotta talk real fast, so he hears you before he leaves) about what you been doin’ and if you try really hard you can pretend he cares. He brings you food, sometimes—real food!—but even that ain’t enough to pry you off of him early. The only thing that can do that is the water. When he dives back into the ocean, it crams itself up your nose and down your throat, and you choke and gag on the salty sting of it and have to struggle back to shore as he dives out away from you again.

You’re never sure if you cry, or if it’s just the saltwater you taste.

You do cry when he dies.

His body washes up on shore when you’re five, a great big chunk torn out of his throat, purple blood turning the wave-foam lavender. You sit next to his head, pet his snout, and you cry yourself hoarse. He was your first father, for better or for worse, and he was the first creature you ever did love. You never quite stop loving him.

_ii. the crab_

Your second father isn’t _your_ father, not for true. He’s your best friend’s lusus, first and foremost, but at your best friend’s command he takes you in after the old goat dies. You’re real careful around him, quiet and subservient as you know how, ‘cause you don’t wanna drive him away the way you did your lusus. He’s odd, though, the crab. He’s around every single night, never does stray off for longer than a couple hours, and he always comes back with fresh-killed food. You and Karkat eat like emperors, and your belly’s swollen full with warm mammal meat more often than not.

Still, you keep on the sopor, though. It’s not so much about filling your belly, anymore. It’s about taming down those sicknasty emotions you got cradled in your scrawny chest, about keepin’ those noisy voices what rattle in your skull soft and sweet. ‘sides, if you go without the sopor for too long, now, you get all _kinds_ of sick. Most unpleasant.

You’re quick to discover, though, that the crab don’t much like it when you eat the sopor. He spies you nibblin’ a pie, once, early on, and bites your shoulder so hard you howl and your best friend gets all shouty at him. You huddle down in a corner and bury your face against your knees, shiver yourself into a real fright, because he’s gonna leave now, crab’s gonna leave, gonna abandon you _and_ your best friend because you’ve _done it now,_ you’ve ruined everything, and—

The crab yanks you out of your corner, chittering angrily, and sets about most aggressively grooming your hair with his raspy-warm tongue. Karkat stares at you a minute, baffled, and you stare back with quite the same mood—you ain’t been groomed by a lusus since you were real tiny. It don’t feel...bad, you think. Then your best friend relaxes, a fond look on his face, and you gotta follow suit. Tiniest thread of a purr starts in your chest, and the crab’s chittering takes on a tone more comforting than scolding as he makes an utter mess of your hair.

When he lets you go, Karkat sweeps you off to a jam, and in the end it all gets hashed out that probably you should quit the sopor. You wean off it real slow-like (and not without a good few relapses), and in the end, you’re glad you did. The crab seems glad, too. He snuggles you more often, scolds you if you don’t get on with your schoolfeeding proper, watches with a careful eye to see that you eat and sleep well.

You’re with the crab for only a sweep, but in that sweep you see him more often than you saw your own lusus in three whole sweeps. You get used to having him around, get used to his attention and his comfort, and it near about crushes you when he dies. Natural causes—he weren’t ever gonna live long, mutant that he was, and you and Karkat both knew it. Takes you both fucking _hard,_ though. Karkat can’t bear to stay in the same hive, and you can’t bear to stay anywhere without Karkat, so the both of you flee to Earth. Karkat’s got friends there—and that’s how you end up meetin’ your third father.

_iii. the dad_

Mr. Egbert is a quiet man, real proper-like, as far as humans go. At John’s plea, he opens his home to you and Karkat when you get to Earth—supposed to be a temporary thing, you know, just until the two of you could get your feet under you. Then he done found out that you were kids (seven sweeps, when you reached Earth) and you had nowhere to go, and fast as you could spin around you were in some human shit called _foster care_ and he was your legal guardian. Weird shit, but Karkat seemed happy about it—for that matter, so did John.

You, on the other hand, well—

You weren’t so sure.

See, you ain’t had good luck with lusii. Made you near about sick to think of Mr. Egbert leaving or dying, as your lusii tend to do. You liked him well enough—liked him real good, for true—and that was the problem. You didn’t wanna get yourself close to him, but he made it damn difficult to resist. He taught you how to bake, how to make real mint pies and vanilla cakes, how to play piano and grow your own herbs and spices out back in the garden. He wasn’t around as much as the crab (had to work, you know) but you understood him a goodly bit better, probably on account of you could both speak English—although yours was a little rough around the edges.

You finally broke down on Father’s Day a half-sweep after he’d taken you in. John had explained the holiday to you, and the three of you had gotten together (you a tad grudgingly) to make Mr. Egbert a card and a cake. You were in charge of the cake, naturally, and you made it just the way he’d shown you. As John and Karkat worked on the card and the cake baked, you’d slipped out into the yard and climbed up into the great big maple tree. It was safer, there, high up and secluded, and you could think. You could see the sea in the distance—a glint of weak sunlight off of silver waves. Karkat let you be, Messiahs bless his clever heart.

You thought about your first father, that old goat what couldn’t be bothered to spend time with you beyond what instinct drove him to.

You thought about your second father, that crab what loved you hard and fierce, much like your best friend himself.

You thought about your third father, that dad what you feared loving for fear of losing.

A right coward, you.

You’d gotten yourself crying, then (you were always a big grub), and you’d glowered fierce as you could through a film of purple tears when the dad’s car pulled up at the hive. He didn’t notice you, at first—slipped into the house with a briefcase in one hand and his hat in the other. You heard the chatter of voices when the door opened. Karkat’s, loud and excited, and your new little brother John’s, bright and cheerful. You ached to go join them.

You, cowardly motherfucker, stayed right where you were.

The dad had come to you, in the end. “Hello there, my boy,” he said, leaning his shoulder against your tree and looking up at you. You glared at the sea instead of him. “Karkat said I’d find you here.”

“Mm-hm,” you said back, ‘cause you couldn’t think of anything smart to say, and you didn’t want him to hear you all choked up, anyway.

“Would you like to come inside for a little while? I have something I’d like to talk to you three about.”

You let out a soft breath. You couldn’t very well refuse, could you? That’d be all kinds of childish. Besides, it weren’t really the dad’s fault you didn’t want him. So you slunk your way down out of the tree and followed him inside, and Karkat and John had had the time of their lives plying him with cake and glittery cards. He’d hugged them both, ruffled their hair, and they’d both looked absolutely giddy at the affection. It baffled you. John, you could understand—but _Karkat?_ Wasn’t he even a little bit afraid? He’d lost a lusus once already. How badly it would hurt him (hurt you both) to lose another.

After the cake had been devoured (you reluctantly forced a slice down your own throat after Karkat gave you the Sad Moirail Look), the dad set his briefcase on the table. “Now, then,” he said, and he actually sounded a touch nervous. He _never_ sounded nervous. You were instantly on edge. “I have a gift for you boys, too.”

You’d glanced warily at John and Karkat—Karkat looked surprised, but there was a knowing, excited gleam in John’s eyes, and he wiggled his shoulders eagerly. The dad pulled two slim, wrapped boxes from his briefcase. Karkat’s was wrapped in black paper with little red electric guitars on it; yours was wrapped in bright silver paper polka-dotted in a smattering of colors.

“I thought Father’s Day was about getting fathers presents,” Karkat said, turning his box over in his hands.

“I suppose typically it is,” the dad allowed, “but today is special. Go ahead, you can open them.”

So you and Karkat tore the paper from your boxes—him more eagerly than you. Within the paper was a slender cardboard box, and within the box, an even slimmer manilla folder. You heard Karkat take a shuddering breath before you opened your folder, and your stomach sunk. Shit. You glanced up at him, and there were glossy pink tears in his eyes. Shit, shit, shit. You tore open your folder, and—

Papers? Motherfucking _what?_

You squinted at them—lots of tiny words, ick—until your eye caught on one word in particular. Ooooh no. Oh, no no no, these aren’t what you think they are, are they? You’ve heard of this, but they can’t be, _no no no,_ not—

“Adoption papers?” Karkat asked, his voice a wobbly rasp.

“Indeed,” the dad said, a hopeful smile on his face. “If you and Gamzee would like, then John and I have already discussed it. I’d like to formally adopt you. Of course, it’s your decision, and if you need time to think about it—”

But Karkat was already nodding so fast you were surprised his head didn’t fall flat off, and your stomach was sinking, sinking, sinking. Your chest felt tight. Karkat was crying. Karkat was _crying,_ and the dad was opening his arms, and then Karkat was hugging him, and it was going to _kill him_ when the dad died—how were you going to hold the shattered pieces of him together? How would he survive it? How would—

You stood up, pushing your chair back from the table with a screech. “I have to—I gotta—” You couldn’t breathe. Your carefully-repaired world was crumbling beneath your feet. Their eyes burned on you. You bolted—to your respiteblock, to your pile, you buried yourself beneath mounds of familiar clothes and empty greasepaint containers and romcom cases.

Of course, the dad came after you. Of course he did.

He knelt beside your pile, and you breathed into one of Karkat’s old sweaters. Your eyes stung. “Gamzee…?” he started, his voice soft. “What’s wrong?”

You couldn’t answer him. Your throat was full up with the sobs you’d learned to swallow.

“It’s—about the adoption, isn’t it?” he asked quietly. You heard him sit. “That’s okay. I know it must be overwhelming for you. Scary, even. You can have all the time you need to decide—and if you decide you don’t want that, then it’s okay. I want what’s best for you, and if staying here isn’t that, then we can do something different.”

But Karkat wouldn’t want to leave. Karkat would stay here, and you couldn’t go anywhere without him, _you couldn’t._ He was your rock, your shelter, the one permanent thing you’d ever had. If he chose to stay, then you would stay right alongside him, no matter how scared you were. You sniffled your determination, rolling over to face the dad.

“No,” you said, your voice cracking right down the middle. “We can stay.”

“Do you _want_ to stay?”

You hesitated.

“Gamzee. I don’t want you to stay because you feel like you have to. I want you to be _happy.”_

“I’m happy where Karkat is.”

“Are you happy with me?”

Another hesitation.

“Is it—something I’m doing?”

You shook your head.

“Something I _have_ done?”

You shook your head again, harder.

“Is it the school?”

“No!” you blurted, sitting up and hugging a sweatshirt to your chest. “It’s nothing, for serious. It’s just—me. Not you. Not anything else. It’s just—motherfuckin’ me.”

“What about you?” the dad coaxed, with a gentleness that made your throat burn. Your eyes stung again, and the dad made a soft sound and reached forward to touch your shoulder, and you—

Well, you broke right the fuck apart.

Tears welled right up past your eyelids, streaked down your cheeks, and the sobs fought their way from your belly where you’d trapped them. You hunched your shoulders, dug claws into the pile and tried to breathe, but you couldn’t swallow the sobs, not anymore, and when the dad died you wouldn’t be able to swallow them, either, and you’d cry and cry and cry but he’d never come back, he’d _never come back—_

“Oh—oh, oh, oh, Gamzee, my boy, come here—” The dad tugged you forward, wrapped you in his arms, rocked you like you were a motherfucking grub again, swayin’ in your cocoon as things in you changed and grew in their unstoppable ways. You buried your face against his shoulder, bawled your heart out, and he rested a hand on the back of your head and hushed you softly. “It’s alright, shh, you’ll be alright.”

You couldn’t tell him what the fuck you were bothered about—couldn’t even speak through your tears, could only make helpless grub clicks and panicked chirps, but that must have been enough, because he squeezed you harder and didn’t let go. Karkat whipped around the corner and into the block, his eyes wide with fright—but he relaxed when he saw you wrapped up in the dad’s arms, let out a little breath. He crossed slow to you, John on his heels, and the both of them knelt behind you. John’s hand came to rest on your shoulder, and Karkat leaned his head against your back and shooshed softly, hands petting your sides.

The dad set his chin between your horns, continued to murmur quiet comfort. “You’re okay, little one,” and “I’m here, I’ve got you,” and “You’re safe, shhh, you’re safe now, son.” After a time, he began to hum a quiet human lullaby, and you curled your claws into his shirt and clung on. You cried for a long motherfuckin’ while, but when you could breathe again, when you could rest weak and quiet in their arms, you told them what you wanted—

You wanted to stay.

That’s how you came to get your third father—the dad. _Your_ dad. You’re still scared quite a bit, but you’re gettin’ better, and things are good. Things are gonna be good for a _long_ goddamn time, as long as you’ve got your two little brothers and your badass dad with you. That was a happy Father’s Day, for motherfuckin’ sure—and the rest of them are gonna be epic, too. You’ll make sure of it.


End file.
